There have been several tribal revolts which could be included in the category of tribal movements. Raghavaiah, in his analytical study on Tribal Revolts (1971), has listed 70 such revolts from 1778 to 1971.
In 1976, the Anthropological Survey of India had identified 36 tribal movements in the country. Man in India-the Journal of Anthropology-brought out a special issue on tribal rebellions in 1945.
The editorial of the issue remarks: “These revolts have been neither numerous nor gravely frequent, yet there is scarcely any major tribe in middle or eastern India which at sometime in the last one hundred and fifty years has not resorted to this gesture of despair.” The issue did not cover the tribal revolts in the North-East Frontier Region, now called the North-East.
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After the attainment of independence and promulgation of the Constitution, the tribals received a new set of values. Now, it became the policy of the state to integrate them into the national mainstream. Before independence the tribals enjoyed a lot of autonomy.
Now, they are required to maintain their identity but at the same time seek to be incorporated in the national mainstream. K.S. Singh, following the categorization of the Anthropological Survey of India, has given a four-fold typology of tribal movements earlier mentioned by us. We will now provide a short description of all these movements.